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Automated Turret
The Automated Turret, also known as the Auto-Turret, is a form of equipment similar in design to a Sentinel. As its name implies, the auto-turret acts as a fully-automatic defense system (deployable antipersonnel turret) for the player and is featured in Halo 3. It is so far only encountered on the Halo 3 levels The Ark, The Covenant and Halo, and is not found on any multiplayer maps due to the issue of keeping the game balanced, and it's inability to work with multiplayer netcode. The auto-turret is best dropped in an area where you want to defend; once deployed, it will automatically shoot at the enemy if they are within the turret's sight. Function This small, robotic turret is a piece of Forerunner technology found on the Ark and Halo and resembles a stripped down Sentinel. Its mode of attack is firing a thin, blue beam at its target, similar to the beam fired by a Sentinel Major, although it is slightly stronger. This device is extremely adept at destroying Flood of all kinds, but is still highly effective at taking out other enemies. Its drawbacks are that it takes a long time to find and shoot a target, it has to wait a minute after deployment before it can attack, and it will occasionally shoot the player. It is useful to deploy when you have many hostiles in the area, providing the player with added firepower. Its HUD symbol is a silhouette of the equipment itself, and slightly resembles the symbol for the Power Drain. Advantages *The Auto-Turret has enough power to remove a Brute's power armor, kill a Jackal and a Grunt with a single shot, and kill a Brute Chieftain within three shots. *Even with its poor targeting and low damage resistance, the Automated Turret can still often provide kills without considerable player support. *The Auto-Turret firepower increases significantly as the game difficulty increases. *The Auto-Turret's beam is powerful enough to push back any airborne enemies. *The Auto-Turret is typically placed in or nearby convenient combat scenarios. For instance, on The Ark, you can bring up to three to the silent cartographer room and deploy them to the lower level, which will be immensely helpful later when dealing with the Jump Pack Brutes and Chieftain. Disadvantages *The turret has a warm-up time of about three seconds. The turret also has problems picking out targets, often tracking allies with its targeting system. *When the turret is your enemy, the AI skill level is greatly increased. As with AI-controlled Marines, it will pick out targets faster, fire more accurately, and will rarely turn away from you on higher difficulties if you are in its sight. *It is rather fragile, easily being dispatched by enemy forces. Additionally, its sight is very narrow and can only attack enemies in front of it. *It will also shoot at the player occasionally. *If bumped by the player or an enemy, it may go flying up into the air in an erratic manner. Behavior Against Foes/Allies After the player has defeated 343 Guilty Spark, if the player deployed any Auto-Turrets outside the Control Room, they will turn against the player and fire at him/her. This could be due to the fact that a Forerunner construct has been destroyed, and any other Forerunner constructs in the immediate area must kill the construct's destroyer. Another theory of why they behave in that manner is because the Monitor of the Installation has been destroyed, and without any protocol to follow, they fired at anything that moved. This includes John-117 and the Arbiter. It is interesting to note that they actually turn on you immediately after the Gravemind contacts you (this can be seen by deploying an Auto-Turret), indicating that the Forerunner constructs may have interpreted this as a violation of protocol. When they are against the player, their shots are incredibly dangerous, strong enough to kill you in two shot on Easy; one shot takes out the player's shield, and a second shot kills the player. On the level The Covenant, if you use an Auto-Turret during the part where you are allied with the Flood, the Auto-Turret and the Flood will try to kill each other. It is likely that the Auto-turret is encoded into the level as a 'Forerunner team member', meaning its allegiance lies with Guilty Spark. When Guilty Spark, a member of the 'Forerunner team', becomes your enemy, it follows a script to break the team allegiance between the player (John-117, and on Co-op, the Arbiter). This is also why the Flood and Auto-turrets fight each other, because while the player's allegiance is aligned with the Flood, the Forerunner and Flood teams remain enemies.By using HMT to exam the actor tags of an AI, the different allegiance flags can be seen and altered. For Halo: Combat Evolved, these teams are 'Flood', Sentinel', 'Covenant', 'Human', and 'Player', as well as several others, which are never used. The allegiance of a unit is determined by the team flag selected for that unit. No one unit of a team can ally with another team without the use of scripts, or that specific unit relocating to another team, but the former is much easier. Interestingly, on the same level, when you get to the Separatist Phantom that arrives to pick up the Arbiter, and you destroy the Phantom (preventing Guilty Spark from departing), any deployed Auto-Turret having Guilty Spark in sight and in range will fire at him. Trivia *The Autosentry Armor Ability in Halo 4 is quite similar to the Automated Turret and may be a derivative or vice versa. *The Automated Turret's beam is similar to the beam seen used by 343 Guilty Spark in Halo: Combat Evolved to scan information from the Pillar of Autumn s shipboard database. Gallery File:Autoturrethud.svg|The Automated Turret HUD icon. File:ForerunnerAutomatedTurret-scantransparent.png|A scan of the Forerunner Auto-Turret from the Halo Encyclopedia. File:Automated Turret.jpg|An inactive turret on the Ark. File:At7.jpg|A deployed turret on the Ark. File:Auto Turret 2.jpg|A closeup of the Auto Turret firing its beam. File:AutoTurret1.jpg|An Automated Turret attacking a Grunt. List of appearances *''Halo 3'' Sources Auto-Turret attacking John Category:Forerunner Weapons Category:Equipment